Marta Bogdańska | Vive la résistance!

MARTA BOGDAŃSKA
Vive la résistance!

since 2022

Animals have long been the objects of the human gaze. We observe them in zoos and museums, through camera lenses, and across social media. They become part of a visual spectacle that is rarely neutral. Looking may stem from fascination, but it can also function as a tool of control. Photography, film, and exhibitions do not merely represent reality—they also organize it and shape the ways in which it is seen.

But what if humans are no longer the only observers? What if the boundary between the one who looks and the one who is looked at becomes uncertain?

These are some of the questions explored by Marta Bogdańska in her long-term, multi-layered project Vive la résistance!, dedicated to the agency, presence, and resistance of animals in visual archives and historical narratives. The exhibition presents the video essay In Space We Trust: Ungulates and an installation based on archival photographs. Through these recovered images, Bogdańska reveals situations in which the relationship between observer and observed becomes ambiguous, allowing animals to assert their own autonomy.

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» GET TO KNOW THE ARTIST «

Polish visual artist, photographer, filmmaker, and cultural manager based in Poland. She lived & worked in Lebanon for 8 years. Marta Bogdańska holds an MA in Philosophy and Diploma in Gender Studies from Warsaw University. She studied with Anton Vidokle and Jalal Toufic at Homeworkspace Programme of Ashkal Alwan association in Beirut. Graduated from Academy of Photography in Warsaw. Attended ‘The School of Looking’ at the Institute of Photography Fort and Open Institute at Powszechny Theater in Warsaw.

Awarded in several occasions, Marta’s work has been shown widely — Belfast Photo Festival, Athens Photo Festival, Photoespaña, Circulation(s), Photolux Festival, FORT Institute of Photography, the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam, Odessa Photo Days, FIF – International Festival of Photography of Belo Horizonte, the Sursock Museum in Beirut, Landskrona Foto in Sweden, and many more.